I’ll be departing in 11 days on my 11-day expedition to the western UP.  Which puts it in perspective, I guess.

It’s kind of a long time to be gone from home.  The standard modern American vacation is 7 days, and I’m padding an extra weekend and another day on either end of it. It’s the longest scooter (and hiking) trip I’ve taken.

But I’ve done trips this long – and longer – before.  My most recent visit to Isle Royale (in 2006) was equally long, spending 9 nights on the island, plus a day before and after driving to and from by car.  About 20 years ago I spent a similar amount of time visiting Iceland and London, and I took a couple of shorter trips to Europe in those days as well.  Which is to say nothing of the month I spent traveling around western Europe in 1986, before spending a three-month term at the University of Aberdeen, or the 5+ weeks Adam Pinsky and I spent traveling by bicycle (and train) around the UK three years before.

But of course those were different times for me.  In the 1980s I was a student, with my parents taking responsibility for the few aspects of my life that needed tending to while I was gone.  In the 1990s I was still young and carefree enough to trust that all would be well, just as I left it, when I returned.  Nowadays, life is stressful, and taking a break from it… is stressful as well.  I need to arrange for things to be done at work in my absence, I need to secure the house, I need to set up the web and mail servers to operate without me, et cetera.

It’s trouble.

But it’s worth it.

Because for 11 days, I’ll be able to leave it all behind. I’ll still be facing challenges: dealing with hundreds of miles of unfamiliar roads, unpredictable weather, and so on. But they’ll be different kinds of problems, and the problems I leave behind (for 11 days) will all be too far out of reach to even think about.

I just need to get through 11 more days first.

I started doing these rides after asking myself “What can I do with a 50cc scooter?”  Because of its engine size, I’ve been limited: by how much distance a bike like that can cover in a day, and what roads it can go on.  And aside from the occasional cheat (crossing the Mackinac Bridge), that’s how I’ve done it.

That’s not going to change.

But I have made a change in the bike.  After more than five years and 24,000 miles, I’ve traded in my red Buddy 50 for … a red Buddy 125.  The 50 has been starting to show its age, not just in faded and scuffed plastic bits and the odd bit of rust, but the engine’s just getting worn out.  It’s a two-stroke, which I run at full throttle much of the time, and it just doesn’t have a lot of miles left on it. It’s running OK for now, but I can’t say how much longer.  So I traded it in for a more durable four-stroke, which also happens to be a bigger engine.

In part the bigger engine compensates for the fact that a four-stroke engine doesn’t produce as much torque-per-cc as a two-stroke.  Most of the four-stroke 50cc scooters out there (Honda Metropolitan, Yamaha C3) are kinda pokey compared to my two-stroke Buddy 50.  But in the end, a four-stroke 125cc over-compensates, producing more power. And I’ll take it. There were parts of this year’s ride that were going to be a little iffy on a 50 – the Porcupine Mountains, the Keweenaw Peninsula – where I was worried I’d have difficulty getting up hills without slowing way down. But I should have no trouble maintaining a reasonable speed on a 125.  And because it’s new, I can be less nervous about mechanical problems.  It’ll even have a warranty and roadside assistance to fall back on if needed.

The new bike looks remarkably like my old bike. That’s because it’s mostly the same. Pretty much the only difference between a Buddy 50 and Buddy 125 is the engine bolted to the rear wheel. It’s even the same model year: a 2009 unit that’s been sitting on the showroom floor, unsold due to the economic crash of a few years ago. I also had the shop transfer the rear rack and the custom mirrors from my old bike. And the red color panels. 🙂 The bike was baby blue – which isn’t really a color I like – so they agreed to swap all the plastic color parts.  This means I even have all the same stickers and scratches as before.  You’d have to look closely at the engine, or notice the new “motorcycle” registration plate to know that it isn’t the same bike.  I’m calling him “Flash”… just like when DC Comics replaces an old superspeed character with a new one: they give him the same trademarked name.

I already have the ride all planned, and I’m going to execute it as planned.  I’m sure I’ll open the throttle a little more and cover some distances more quickly than otherwise, and add in a detour here and there because I can, but I’m not going to race from place to place at 60mph on the interstates… because that was never how I wanted to travel in the first place.  I plan to still putz along at 40mph on the back roads, because that’s literally the way I roll.  That’s traveling… MI way.

I’ve finished making my advance reservations for this year’s scooter-and-hiking trip, to the UP and Isle Royale.  I’ve got campground reservations at five Michigan state parks, one Wisconsin state forest, and round-trip bookings on two ferries: across Lakes Michigan and Superior.  That’s over $500 spent.

The only expenses I have left are the things I can’t pay for until I’m actually underway: food, fuel, and a few fees.  And the only campsites I don’t have reserved are the two nights on Isle Royale, which are always first-come-first-served.  So.  Not much to do for the next couple months but wait. 🙂

The snow is melting, the roads are clearing, I’ll soon be commuting on the scooter, and it’s already almost too late to start making reservations for this year’s road trip.  I keep forgetting how quickly Ludington State Park can get booked: I just managed to get the very last campsite available the night I want to stay there … in mid July.  The night in question is a Friday (which is why it’s so popular), and there are a good selection of open spots to choose from on some other nights, but I have constraints on what day of the week I need to leave, because the ferry to Isle Royale doesn’t run every day.

(If I didn’t get this campsite, I would’ve had the option of booking one of the rustic hike-in sites at Ludington, but those are a mile away from the road. Under most circumstances that wouldn’t bother me, but I have a ferry to get to first thing in the morning, and I don’t want to have to factor in a trek through the dunes carrying my gear.)

So I guess I’ve just nailed down the dates for this trip.  I’ll ride up to Ludington the afternoon of Friday the 18th, then take the Badger to Wisconsin the next morning and ride up to Wells State Park just north of the Michigan border. I’ll then spend two days riding the rest of the way to Copper Harbor, more or less due north. I’ll take the Isle Royale Queen IV to the Island, spend two nights there, and take it back to Copper Harbor the third day.  Next I ride southwest to the Porcupine Mountains and Lake of the Clouds.  From there I’ll turn southeastward, and spend a night in the Wisconsin highlands.  That’s followed by an all-day ride to catch an overnight crossing of the Badger, then ride home in the morning.  In summary: 4 days up, 3 days for Isle Royale, and 4 days back down.

That’s a day less than I’d planned for last year.  I accomplished that by charting a different route through the 8 counties still on my “to visit” list, and taking a shortcut across Wisconsin that last day instead of taking a detour to hit one last county. Not that I don’t enjoy the time on the road, but … 11 days away from home is long enough.

Michigan is currently stuck in its first old-fashioned winter in years.  I’ve only been on the scooter once in the last six or seven weeks, for a short just-because-I-can ride, on a Saturday when the temperature briefly rose into the upper 30Fs before dropping back down into single-digit highs, where it’s stayed since then.  And the long-range forecast looks equally bleak.  So I’m looking farther ahead.

After aborting last year’s ride up to the western UP, planning this year’s ride should be pretty simple: just adjust all of the dates by -1 (to keep things on the same day of the week) and try again, right?  Not exactly.  Because I’m taking advantage of this do-over to rethink things… just a little.

One of my concerns going into the trip last year was the amount of distance I was going to have to cover on certain days.  Especially on a li’l 50cc that’s no longer as young as it used to be.  And that concern turned out to be justified.  You see, several weeks after I didn’t ride up to Copper Harbor and back, my engine started getting really loud at certain speeds.

The mechanic diagnosed it as a cracked piston, and fixing it required what’s known (among people who know motorcycle engines) as a “top end rebuild”.  After doing this, the mechanic tested out the whole engine, and said it’s within spec now, and it’s definitely running quieter and smoother than it was.  But it still has 23,000 miles on it, and I don’t want to push it.  Especially to the point where I might have to literally push it.  Not on a mountain road, maybe 50 miles from the nearest town, and possibly 200 miles from the nearest motorcycle mechanic.

So I’m sorting out a different route. By taking the unvisited counties in a different order (more or less counterclockwise instead of clockwise), then taking a long shortcut across northeast Wisconsin for the last full day of riding, I can cut 100-200 miles off the total distance, which should make a few of the other days on the road – in the wilds of the UP – a bit easier.  It also eliminates almost all of the time I might otherwise have to spend on US-2, which is the busiest road in the whole peninsula.

Another change that I’m considering is taking a different scooter. There’s an obvious appeal to sticking with Flash, for the satisfaction and bragging rights of doing the whole state on a 50cc scoot. But borrowing (or buying, then re-selling afterward) a 125cc or 150cc scooter would eliminate a bit of anxiety about whether I’ll run into any hills I can’t handle.  I’d have to put up some money up front to buy another scooter, but putting around 1500 miles on it wouldn’t hurt its resale value.  The main “catch” would be the licensing and insurance requirements I’d have to deal with.  And the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to sell it as easily as I bought it.

I stopped at the dock for the Badger to cancel my reservations with them. That was just before 8:00am, which is when they ask you to arrive for boarding for the morning crossing. There was already a line of a couple dozen vehicles (including a couple motorcycles) waiting to get loaded. Apparently it’s a lot busier for the daytime crossings than for the overnight I did four years ago. I only get $25 back for today’s ticket, but I’ll get the full refund for the crossing I was supposed to take 9 days from now.

You can’t see it well in this photo, but a cute little touch is that they have the emblem for US-10 on the entrance to the ship.  US-10 officially ends at the dock and resumes going west in Manitowoc.

To keep it simple, I mostly stuck to the obvious route home. After a detour for the lovely Lakeshore Drive I took yesterday on the way into Ludington, I stuck to Business US-31 (the traditional roads running parallel to the highway itself), passing through Hart, Shelby, New Era, Rothbury, Montague, and Whitehall. After getting through Muskegon (an ugly multilane highway) and Muskegon Heights (someone please give them some money for roads), I took Airline, Apple, and Leonard, a series of roads roughly paralleling I-96, through Fruitport, Nunica, Eastmanville, and Lamont. Leonard Street, of course, becomes one of the major thoroughfares of Grand Rapids once it enters Kent County.

There was a stiff wind of 10-15mph from the SW most of the time, which often slowed me down.  Even so, stopping only for gas and the occasional navigation assessment, I made the trip in a little over 4 hours. I know, I know: it’s foolish to ride that long without a break, for the bike’s sake if not my own. I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing today.  I abandoned my plan to faithfully retrace the more scenic route I took on my way out of town on my very first excursion… because it isn’t time for that yet.

Once home, I cancelled the state park reservations that I could.  I was too late to cancel tonight’s; if I’d been more decisive I could’ve cancelled it last night.  And I don’t get a full refund on those that I could cancel.   My reservations for the Isle Royale Queen are just far enough in advance that I’ll be getting an 85% refund.  So that’s some money lost, but not a lot.  For what it’s worth, the repairs on the scooter shouldn’t cost much.

So.  Here I am, home.  9 days early.  Guess I’ll unpack, which will take 10 minutes.  Then un-hide the valuables I stashed, in case someone noticed that I was away from home: another 10 minutes.  I have a family get-together on Sunday that I was going to have to miss.  Then I suppose I’ll go back to work on Monday, and use those Planned Time Off days some other time.